Ruling Boosts Rosemont Casino

Gaming Board To Vote Next Week

Questions About Investors Linger

A Cook County judge Thursday removed a major legal roadblock to the long-stalled Emerald Casino project in Rosemont, but victory for the casino's roster of wealthy and influential backers may be short-lived.

The Illinois Gaming Board is expected to vote Tuesday on whether to give the go-ahead for the casino, nearly two years after the legislature passed controversial legislation designed to fast-track approval for it to be built in Rosemont.

But what seemed like a slam dunk in 1999 has grown more problematic in the intervening months as some board officials have questioned the ethics of some investors in the Emerald Casino group and board investigators have zeroed in on allegations that other key figures in the deal have associations with mobsters.

Board action on the casino has been slowed not only by that investigation but also by a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the 1999 gambling law. That suit, filed by a rival casino group, was dismissed Thursday by Circuit Judge Robert Boharic.

Emerald Casino lawyers hailed the decision and predicted it cleared the way for quick board approval for the Rosemont facility.

"There's nothing I am aware of preventing the Gaming Board from granting Emerald its license," Michael Ficaro, one of the attorneys, said. "I expect it to happen."

But Glenn Seidenfeld, the leader of Lake County Riverboat L.P., which hoped to win approval for a casino in Lake County, vowed to appeal.

"If no one has the right to question whether the legislature can pass special legislation to benefit the powerful and the wealthy, then we don't really have a system that works," he said.

The Lake County suit claimed that the gambling law illegally steered ownership rights to the Emerald Casino venture, headed by former Waste Management executive Donald F. Flynn.

Once projected to become the state's top-grossing gambling barge with revenue of $300 million a year, the Emerald Casino has been hobbled by both legal questions and the board background investigation into key casino figures that has increasingly delved into sensitive areas.

Among those under scrutiny is longtime Rosemont Mayor Donald Stephens, who was twice acquitted of federal tax and fraud charges in the 1980s and who has long been dogged by allegations of ties to organized-crime figures that he forcefully denies.

Stephens is not an Emerald Casino investor but has exerted control over its construction and insurance contracts and its financial structure and has close ties to several proposed investors. Stephens is also a former business partner of William Daddano Jr., who is listed on the Chicago Crime Commission's roster of organized-crime leaders in Chicago.

Daddano is considered "an active member of the Outfit," said Wayne Johnson, the commission's chief investigator.

Stephens and Daddano were co-owners of a company called American Trade Show Services, which leased forklifts and aerial lifts needed by trade show contractors at McCormick Place and Jacob Javits Convention Center in New York. A third owner of the trade show firm was Nicholas Boscarino, an investor in the Rosemont project through a trust in his daughter's name.

Boscarino, a former chief steward for Teamsters Local 714 in Rosemont, resigned from his union post in 1996 to avoid testifying in an investigation of union corruption, according to a report of a federal panel conducting that probe.

By his own account, Stephens is also a longtime friend of Anthony "Jeeps" Daddino, whom federal prosecutors describe as a well-established mob associate imprisoned as recently as 1999 for refusing to testify before a federal grand jury in exchange for immunity.

Stephens once wrote a federal judge pleading for leniency for Daddino, then a Rosemont building inspector, after Daddino was convicted of collecting protection money for the mob.

Stephens has also refused to disavow or return $13,000 in donations to his political fund from firms linked to Peter DiFronzo, whom the FBI considers "the chief lieutenant for his brother, John DiFronzo, the ... boss of the Chicago [La Cosa Nostra]," according to a 1998 report by federal investigators.

Stephensrepeatedly has denied ties to organized crime and did so again Thursday, emphatically dismissing the Gaming Board's concerns.

"If they think I'm a crook, let them say that," Stephens said.

The close scrutiny of Stephens and others close to the Emerald Casino deal is symptomatic of a sea change in attitude at the Gaming Board, which under state law has wide latitude to reject applicants for gambling licenses if they are deemed to be a menace to the reputation or integrity of Illinois casinos.